Meinl FCA5-L Foot Cabasa Review

Good day!

When I first saw the Meinl foot cabasa, I thought it was a super idea. The cabasa is an Afro-Latin instrument with loops of steel ball chain around a cylinder; it is popular in Latin music, especially in Bossa Nova tunes. The German company Meinl came up with the great idea to mate the cabasa with a drum pedal to allow musicians to multi-task.

I figured this foot cabasa would be a natural for a guitarist that was looking for a little percussion, or a conga or timbale player that wanted to add a another layer of percussion to a live show. Not surprisingly, reality is a little different than I figured it would be.

The Meinl foot cabasa uses one of their turbo (I hate that adjective) cabasas with a stainless steel cylinder over a wooden block that has 5 sound ports on each side for extra volume. This is attached to one of their stout powder-coated foot pedal frames that would be similar to what you would find on a high-hat or bass drum set-up.

You can set up this instrument so that it will provide a single or double-stroke for each depression of the pedal (i.e. will rotate only when stepping down, or when stepping and releasing). A drum key is included for working on/adjusting the pedal.

This all sound great on paper, but when I tried it out I realized pretty quickly that it would not work out for me.

For starters, any idea you have of starting an acoustic one-man band you might be put off by the operation noise of the pedal. If you are playing an amplified set you might get away with it, but for an acoustic coffee house set the clanky pedal movement is just too loud.

Another issue would be the lack of volume control when using the foot cabasa. As you are not muting it with your hand you can only have one volume level, which is loud. Turbo loud, as the Meinl folks may say.

Of course, there is my personal problem, which is my complete lack of coordination, which prevented me from doing anything that would be consider even the least bit musical with this pedal.

Your mileage may vary, and this might be just the product you are looking for, but just be sure that you try before you buy, so you do not get stuck with something you will not be able to use. If you decide to pick up a Meinl FCA5-L foot cabasa, they have a list price of $276, and a more reasonable street price of $159.

Mahalo!

Meinl Headliner Cajon Review

Sugoi!

I have been messing around with a cajón for a few months now, and it is a blast. Of course this smells like blog post material to me…

The cajón is an Afro-Peruvian percussion instrument that has been around since the late 1700s. Cajon translates from Spanish to English as "crate" or "drawer", and it is pretty much a wooden box that the player sits on top of while tapping or slapping the frontplate.

It evolved from instruments from west and central Africa, and was adopted by Peruvian slaves using Spanish shipping crates. I have heard that these boxes became popular as musical instruments because the Spaniards had banned music in predominantly African areas of their colonies. Cajóns were easily disguised as stools or tables and thus were not identified as musical instruments.

Modern cajóns are popular in Peruvian and Cuban music. They are made of nice plywood for the sides and back, and may have different tonewoods for the front plate. The fronts are usually attached with screws, and the tone can be altered by tightening or loosening the screws.

They also have a mechanism similar to the one found on snare drums to give a sizzle sound. The tension of the snare can be adjusted, and more expensive cajóns will have a lever to disable the snare mechanism.

I have experimented a bit with my cajón and have gotten some great results with brushes and drum sticks, and even tried out my bass drum pedal on it. The pedal worked great, but I was afraid I might crack the wood, and it made me feel a little bit like a creepy one-man-band.

The cajón we are looking at today is a Meinl Headliner, model HCAJ1NT. It has a rubber wood (whatever that is) frontplate and body sprayed with a matte finish. This is a small-sized cajon, measuring about 18 inches tall by 12 inches wide and deep. There is a non-slip seating surface on top, little rubber feet on the bottom and an adjustable snare inside.

If you want to try out a cajón for yourself, this would be a good choice. The Meinl Headliner has a list price of $196 and a street price of $99. It is a lot of fun and makes a nice end table too.

Mahalo!